A wonderful breakthrough that will hopefully make our technology greener in the long run. With over 108 million computers sold this year alone, we are going through technology at an alarming rate.
This follows on from the recent success in European Parliamentfor tougher conflict minerals regulation. Could our technology be slowly but surely getting both greener and more ethical?
Reduce, reuse, recycle. A mantra that we’ve been hearing since we were wee little younglings. Environmentally friendly solutions are the new designer handbags, but more useful. Keeping with the trend to reduce waste and make production of electronic devices more sustainable, researchers have developed a semiconductor chip made almost entirely out of wood. With consumer electronics usually made from oil-based plastics and other potentially harmful chemicals, the team hopes that by creating these chips they can alleviate some of the waste problems associated with non-biodegradable materials. The paper published in Nature Communications explains that the support layer found in all computer chips can be replaced by cellulose nanofibril (CNF), a biodegradable material made from trees.
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